Creative Leadership

Creative Leadership:

A future vision for the

Clore Leadership Programme

An essay by Robert Hewison and John Holden

September 2013

The Brief

We have been asked to write an ‘opinionated essay’ about the Clore Leadership Programme,examining the way that the cultural landscape has changed since the project was launched in 2003, and suggesting how the Programme willneed to adapt to new circumstances. This then is not an evaluation, though it does look at what has been done so far, and broadly assesses whether the Programme has achieved its initial aims. More provocatively, it looks forward and proposes changes that will be necessary to meet the needs of the cultural sector and those who will be its future leaders.

The world is radically different now, compared to how it was when we first investigated the subject of cultural leadership in 2002. Some of the changes, like the ups and downs of funding, serious though they are, may be no more thanthe ebb and flow of a continuum. But others, such as digital technology, have disrupted the entire field, altering expectations, relationships, ambitions, and calling into question the most basic assumptions about how arts and cultural organisations operate – including what it means to be a ‘leader’. The question arises: in this new world, what can the older generation teach the younger?

Methodology

Our work has been commissioned as part of a wider review that is being carried out by the Clore Leadership Programme, andis limited to the Fellowship Programme, whose first cohort was formed in 2004. Excluding the intake for 2013-14, 231 Fellowships have been awarded. One Fellow unfortunately died while a participant; one has died subsequently. We have been given access to Fellows’ responses to a survey,carried out in February 2013, of Clore Fellows and Short Course participants between 2004 and 2012, and at our request the Programme conducted a further survey asking Fellows in the first eight cohorts about their circumstances in 2013. 103 Fellows replied to the 2013 Clore Participants Survey; there were 96 responses to our own short survey. In all, 150 Fellows have replied to one or both surveys. We followed this up with a sample of nineFellows from across the cohorts whom we interviewed, on the understanding that their comments would be anonymous. We also conducted a group discussion with seven Fellows from the 2012/13 cohort, and made two visits in July 2013to observe the final Bore Place session for the 2012/13 cohort. In addition, we interviewed a number of funders of the Programme, cultural leaders and people who have contributed to courses, who are listed in appendix 1. We would like to thank the Programme’s director, Sue Hoyle, and all the team at the Programme, especially William Warrener, for the help they have given us.

The shape of this Essay

This essay falls into five parts: although this is a discussion of the future of the Clore Leadership Programme, it begins by revisiting our original Task Force Final Report of December 2002. We then move on to consider the way in which the institutional and cultural context in which the Programme operates has changed in the decade since its inception. Economic, demographic and technological changes arereshaping the cultural landscape, and in the third section we consider the implications of these changes for the cultural sector: in particular we believe that a shift is taking place in the balance between the ‘creative’ and the ‘managerial’ responsibilities of individuals and institutions. Finally we consider what the consequences of the different conditions that will prevail will be for the Programme, and make some specific recommendations as to how it should respond to the changes we describe.

Our conclusions are challenging: although the fundamental aim of the Programme – to improve leadership in the cultural sector – should remain unchanged, the disruptions to cultural life and organisations caused by shifts in the education system, funding patterns, and above all digital technology have changed leadership priorities, responsibilities, and the means of achieving cultural innovation and excellence. Leaders will still need to develop a sense of self, a sense of purpose, and the ability to operate to maximum effectiveness; but the Programme will have to find new ways to extend its reach: from the impact it has on individuals, to their creative contribution to the wider world they are expected to serve.

1. Looking back

In our 2002 report we suggested a number of ways in which the success of the Programme might be assessed five years after its launch. These were that:

• The Programme has attracted additional partners and financial support. This has been achieved, as the list of funding partners in Appendix 2 shows. The Programme is funded through a partnership between the public sector, philanthropic foundations and the cultural sector, with the leading partners over the last 9 years being the Clore Duffield Foundation and Arts Council England. The robustness of this relationship has provided leverage for income from other sources and enabled the Programme to diversify its funding. Nearly 70 funders have contributed to the Fellowship programme and, in addition, in-kind support has been attracted from organisations such as the RSA, European Commission, Ashridge and Windsor Leadership Trust. For example, in 2004/5, the first Clore Fellows were funded from 12 different sources, including one self-funded Fellow: the 2013/14 Fellows are funded from 28 sources, including 16 cultural institutions, ranging from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the National Art Gallery in Singapore. The UK's cultural community continues to support the programme, both in-kind and financially, with direct contributions from consortia partners expected to amount to £225,000 in 2013/14, plus salary and back-fill costs.

• Policy research by Fellows will not only have been published, but will have had an influence on public debate. There is general agreement that although Fellows are making a contribution to public debate, the research element of the Programme has not been successful. It has already been modified, and we return to this issue in a separate section below.
• A significant number of Fellows from the first cohort will have achieved promotion to leadership posts. This was achieved even more rapidly than we expected, and although we only have information on 150 Fellows, it appears that successive cohorts have enjoyed similar success. The surveys show that a substantial number have moved to more senior positions, and there has been a healthy flow between freelance work and working in institutions. At least a dozen new organisations have been launched by Fellows, while others have returned to the organisations they led and expanded them. We also note that a very tiny number have left the cultural sector or renounced their leadership ambitions, but, as we argued during the Programme’s exploratory phase in 2002, this should not be regarded as a failure. As one Fellow who has changed fields told the Participants Survey: ‘It finalised my decision to move out of the arts sector and the creative industries. It clarified who I am, what I stand for, and what I do best’ – something the Programme is intended to achieve for every Fellow.
• Women and minorities will be better represented at leadership level.64.7% per cent of Fellows have been female, 19.7% per cent of Fellows are of British BAME origin. The Programme has undoubtedly strengthened the representation of women at senior levels, but although there have been some successes, leaders from minorities do not appear to have broken through in the traditional cultural sector, despite having been well represented in successive cohorts. In recent years the Programme has also begun to address the needs of leaders with disabilities.
• The number of applications to join the scheme indicates that there is steady or rising demand. The rate of applications for the Fellowship – averaging 320 a year – shows no falling off in demand. Cohort sizes have ranged between 21 and 30.
• Administration costs should be judged to be reasonable in proportion to income and the number of Fellows.Given the leads and lags between income, expenditure and the periods of different Fellowships, together with two changes in accounting dates between setting up the scheme and the present day, plus the difficulty of allocating general Clore costs to the specific Programme, it is no easy matter to determine whether the costs are reasonable. Based on a view of all the annual accounts, we judge the costs relevant to the Programme to be reasonable. Total expense has varied between £1 million and £1.5 million each year, and the financial management has so far been sound. Neither funders, auditors nor the governance structure have raised any concerns.

Overall, the aim of the Programme has been to increase the resilience of the cultural sector as a whole, to raise standards of leadership, and restore a sense of confidence among individuals and institutions. The Programme has itself played a leadership role both in the UK and overseas, by developing leadership training in the sector, and preparing the way for the decision by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in 2006 to launch what became a £22 millionCultural Leadership Programme in partnership with Arts Council England, the Museums Libraries and Archives Council, and Creative and Cultural Skills. The Clore played a vital role in supplying short courses for the national Cultural Leadership Programme, and continues to run them, now with funding direct from ACE.

The cross-disciplinary nature of the Fellowship Programme (from Archives to Ballet) has broken down barriers between art forms, and between the museums, heritage and performing arts sectors. The notorious ‘silos’ that exist within and between cultural institutions are beginning to be more porous. The growing network of Fellows has undoubtedly strengthened the resilience of the sector, as is evidenced by the important role played by Fellows in the informal “What Next?” movement, set up in 2011 to address the growing crisis in public funding for culture.The Director of the Museums Association, Mark Taylor, commented in the Museums Journal: ‘Thirty years ago when faced with severe cuts the sector almost collapsed. This is not the case now and that reflects the quality of the leadership we have. Clore has been a key part of that’.

Alan Davey, Chief Executive of ACE, however, has sounded a warning. While agreeing that the sector had become more resilient as a result of the contribution of the Programme, producing leaders who are more prudent with money and wiser about how organisations function, he commented to us that: ‘resilience isn’t just about financial survival, or political survival, it is also about being creative. In the arts, being prepared to tackle a challenge creatively can get you out of trouble, because the art creates the solution. The Clore needs to consider how to deal with artistic risk as well as financial risk.’ This is an issue to which we will return.

The Programme has changed and developed since its launch. The opportunity to offer International Fellowships in 2008has been a successful innovation. It has widened the horizons of the UK Fellows and spread the benefits of the Programme overseas. (There have been 25 International Fellows since 2008.) There has been a gradual process of change in the curriculum of the two residencies that each cohort spends at Bore Place (which continues to be a productive location).There is now more attention given to hard skills, and more ‘space and air’ in the timetable – Fellows have been given more down-time, and more chance to debate informallywith each other. One Fellow commented: ‘Reflection was not part of my practice – just being very busy. I have learned to sit back, not push forward’. The learning methodology has altered, with less direct teaching, and more interactive discussion. Access to coaching has been recognised as an important element, and it is noticeable that some Fellows are themselves taking on coaching roles. While retaining an appropriate flexibility, the time each Fellow spends on the course has been shortened to less than a year.

The Fellows have responded to the substantial investment that the Programme makes in them by rising to the demands of the course. Its length and intensity is a serious challenge to Fellows, who have to confront their ambitions and motivations. As the cultural consultantAdrian Ellis commented: ‘This is not just a bit of CPD’. At present only eight Fellows have not completed their research requirements, but they are expected to do so, and so will formally graduate. A further two Fellows are not expected to deliver their research, and so will not graduate. We understand that only one Fellow dropped out during the course of the Fellowship, and that was for significant personal reasons.

But 229 Fellows cannot change the world on their own, and it is clear that there is still a need for the Programme. The distinguished cultural leaderRuth Mackenzie told us that she believes that it is too soon to judge the impact of Clore Fellows. In her view, while individuals have done well, particularly Clore Fellows, leadership in the arts sector still has its problems, especially in regional theatres and museums. This appears to be borne out by an Arts Council study of the organisations that applied to it for National Portfolio status in 2010. The governance, leadership and management of less than a quarter of organisations were judged to be strong, and 22 per cent were judged to be weak.

Another Arts Council report, the Theatre Assessment 2009 voiced some concerns about how schemes to promote cultural leadership were perceived:

Opinions about the emergence of leadership programmes in general, and the Clore Leadership Programme in particular, were divided. Some people felt that these have provided opportunities for a wide range of people. Others have reservations about the effectiveness of these programmes: they were concerned about over-promotion, downplaying the role of the artist, lack of engagement with the theatre profession, and elitism.

While it is true that Clore Fellows are relatively few in number, have undergone a rigorous selection, and have been generously supported, in our view Fellows do not behave like an elite, nor do they work exclusively (or even significantly) in what might be termed elite organisations. But the Clore network, both vertically and horizontally, is strong. We have heard the Fellowship compared to a ‘walled garden’ that is insufficiently open to the outside world. This may be no more than an acknowledgement of the fact that, as one Fellow noted: ‘lots of people out there have been turned down’, but it does suggest that the Programme can be negatively perceived, and needs to ensure that it is reaching out to the cultural sector as a whole.

We say this because the Programme has so much to offer. It has transformed leadership development for the cultural sector in the UK and beyond. It has not only succeeded in creating a cadre of sectoral and art form leaders, but has stimulated investment in leadership on the part of governments, agencies, foundations and charities. As Régis Cochefert, Head of Arts at one of the Programme’s partner-funders, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, told us: ‘Clore is a wonderful thing. It has changed lives, not just of the Fellows. It has raised standards, increased resilience, been cross-sectoral; grown confidence. It is an enormous achievement and highly cost-effective. We wish we had thought of it.’

2. Looking forwards

When the Clore Leadership Programme was set up in 2003, the cultural world was enjoying a period in the sun. Reforms to the National Lottery had launched a wave of investment in the cultural infrastructure running into billions of pounds. Between 1997 and 2010 government grant-in-aid to Arts Council England nearly doubled in real terms to £449 million, and other cultural agencies enjoyed similar increases. In 2007 Prime Minister Tony Blair made a speech suggesting that the cultural sector had been enjoying ‘a golden age’. All this has changed. Following the economic crisis that began in 2008 and the change of government in 2010, there has been severe retrenchment in public funding, both at national and local authority level.

The cumulative cut to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport between 2010/11 and 2015/16 will be 45 per cent, meaning a substantial reduction in its own staff, and severe cuts in grant-in-aid to Non Departmental Public Bodies. (The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council has disappeared altogether, other agencies have been merged). The Arts Council cut funding for National Portfolio Organisations and Museums by a total of £3.9 million in 2013/14 and £7.7 million in 2014/15. A further spending review covering 2015/16 made a further 5 per cent cut to ACE and national museums. ACE and the museum sector generally have also had to cut their staff. By 2014/15 the accumulated reduction since 2010/11 to local authority spending on culture (including libraries and sport) will be in the order of 35 per cent.